


The Weight of It

by brightened



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightened/pseuds/brightened
Summary: Harry, struggling with Sirius’s death, travels to Grimmauld Place. He finds a memento that leaves him questioning what he knew about his godfather and, ultimately, what he knows about life as The Chosen One.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Severus Snape
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	The Weight of It

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon compliant except that I didn’t take the time to research the exact timeline of sixth year. Just read this story as happening around the events of Half Blood Prince. Also made some changes to Harry’s handle on grief and such. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It was, Harry saw as he squinted at his watch in the darkness, only a few minutes until two. When he’d written to Professor Dumbledore the first week back at Privet Drive, he hadn’t expected much of an answer. In fact, when he unfurled the response and scanned the scroll to find Dumbledore’s signature at the bottom, slight dread swept into his gut. He was sure he would be scolded, dismissed, brushed aside - yet that hadn’t happened.

The minute hand ticked to the new hour and Harry’s window flew open. He scrambled off his bed and crossed the room to peer out onto the street below. Dumbledore stood in the dark street, a tall, slim figure in turquoise robes.

“Ready, Harry?” Dumbledore called. Harry gripped the window frame as he nodded. At once a small platform protruded from the window and another slightly below it - _steps_ , Harry realized, and climbed out of the window as they continued to form. 

After the descent, Harry’s slippered feet settled into the damp grass of the front yard and Dumbledore offered his arm.

“You must be prepared to leave at any moment,” Dumbledore said as Harry grasped his forearm. “There’s no guarantee it will be secure.” It was only as his fingers curled around robe that he noticed the hand at the end of the arm - blackened, burned.

“Your-” Harry started. The rest of his sentence was lost to time as they twisted into the smothering nothingness of Apparition.

They found their footing on a cracked sidewalk in front of a painfully familiar building and Harry stuffed his hands into his pockets as he looked up at the front door of Number Twelve. He forgot entirely about Dumbledore’s injured hand as he took in his godfather’s childhood home - his godfather’s final prison.

“I’ve checked that it’s unoccupied,” Dumbledore said. He spoke each word gently, as though soothing a wild animal, and Harry realized then that he was trembling, jaw clenched, face taut. “I’ll wait outside.”

 _I have nothing that belonged to Sirius_ , Harry scrawled a week prior, in the middle of one insomniac fit, after the nightly tears dried and the guilt and regret settled in to gnaw at him like a dog on a bone. _Can I look through Grimmauld Place?_

Dumbledore took pity. He agreed and told Harry to be ready at two AM the following Saturday. So it was that Harry stepped into the dusty entryway, past the shrieking portrait and the mounted elf heads, and up the stairs into the room that had been Sirius’s.

The room looked transported out of Gryffindor tower, garnet and gold splashed throughout, and Harry grinned in a bit of an embarrassed way as he shuffled up to the pictures of the nearly naked women stuck on the wall. 

The dresser drawers were filled only with clothes - socks, underwear, an unnecessary amount of leather and denim. Harry felt creepy and foolish pawing through the garments. Sirius only ever wore robes in front of Harry and none of that mattered anyway. Harry hadn’t come for the jacket bearing band patches and sharpie doodles. It held no meaning for him. 

Impulsively, Harry shrunk it down and stuck it into his pocket anyway.

Harry turned next to the nightstand. He pulled open the drawer and then very quickly slammed it shut. There were private things in the nightstand. Harry, red-faced, glanced back at the pictures of the women on the wall. Very private things.

Feeling foolish for coming at all, Harry did a final sweep of the room. He pictured Sirius sprawled on the sheets, listening to a Quidditch match on the radio. Had he ever done that? Harry didn’t, and would never, know.

He turned to leave. The floor creaked. He looked down and pushed his slipper into the floor. It creaked again.

Thinking of his own hiding space, Harry bent down and pushed on each corner of the board. Nothing. He crawled along the floor, testing. The wood held firm. With a defeated sigh, Harry lifted a hand to the bed to pull himself up.

Then he saw it - a worn corner of cardboard peeking out from under the bed. Harry slid it out and found himself holding a very battered shoebox. A thrill ran through him as he flipped the lid. A pile of photos, letters, and trinkets laid inside.

He lifted one sheet of parchment at random and scanned through it. It was a letter from Remus Lupin, so vague and partially coded that Harry could barely understand it. 

He replaced the note and hefted the box under his arm. He hurried out of the gloomy house and back to Professor Dumbledore who didn’t ask what Harry had found. He only smiled and said, “It’s a breezy night.”

Harry’s heart still pounded half an hour later as he climbed back into his bed and unceremoniously dumped the contents of the shoebox onto the sheets. As he read letters and peered at photographs, he sorted things into piles - a large one for Lupin, a small one for Tonks and her mother, and a distressingly tiny bundle from Harry’s mum and dad.

Roughly an hour passed as Harry dug through Sirius’s personal belongings until there was only one photo left. Harry picked it up and grinned to himself when he realized it was a photo of Sirius kissing some girl with black hair. It was clearly self-taken from a low angle, dark and slightly blurry, her face mostly obscured by Sirius’s head and hands. Harry leaned closer to see if he could make out any features of the girl - was she someone he would recognize?

The kissing couple broke apart and the photo fluttered from Harry’s grasp as his fingers went limp.

“No,” he said aloud though the words came out mostly a whisper. He watched as photo-Sirius, clearly school-age, maybe sixth or seventh year, reached up and brushed a hand across Severus Snape’s cheek.

It had to be a trick, Harry decided as the boys in the photo found each other’s lips again. His dad must have charmed it as a prank. Why Sirius had kept it, Harry couldn’t guess.

Harry flipped the photo over and found on the back, in Sirius’s untidy hand, _December 1977_.

Why would Sirius label a joke photo?

Turning it back over, watching Snape run long fingers through Sirius’s hair, Harry felt a disconcerting certainty that it wasn’t a trick at all.

——

Harry had never willingly stayed behind to speak to Snape so it took a few lessons for him to work up the nerve. Eventually, the week of Halloween, he mumbled an excuse to Ron and Hermione about forgetting a quill and doubled back to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

Snape looked up when Harry entered the otherwise empty room. His lip curled as he asked sneeringly, “Can I help you?”

“What’s this about?” Harry asked without preamble and pulled the photo from his pocket. One corner was bent from its frequent travels in Harry’s robes and the writing on the back had mussed a bit. He extended his hand to show Snape and rage bloomed across the professor’s face. 

Snape reached to snatch the picture but not for nothing was Harry the youngest seeker in a century. He easily evaded the grab and pressed the picture against his side, shielding it with his arm. 

Snape’s hand wavered as though he intended to pull out his wand. “Give that to me,” he commanded, though his words came out strangled and shaking with fury.

“It was Sirius’s so it’s mine now,” Harry said belligerently. “So it’s real, then? When did you-”

“I won’t answer your questions,” Snape hissed. He stalked out from behind his desk; Harry took a few instinctive steps back. “If I don’t have that photograph in my hand in thirty seconds, you will regret it. Painfully.” 

Now he did withdraw his wand. Harry scowled and thrust the photo towards Snape, who took it quickly but, Harry noted, carefully. In only a moment it disappeared into his robes.

“Why do you want it anyway?” Harry asked sourly. 

Snape was silent for long enough that Harry was convinced he’d never answer. He moved to leave and only then, very quietly, did Snape speak.

“I don’t have anything else.”

Harry stared at him and Snape looked back evenly. The rage smoothed away into his usual cold disdain. Harry decided to push his luck.

“Tell me about him. Please,” Harry said and added a gratuitous, “Sir.”

The door opened - though it was a soft sound, Harry jumped, startled. Two Hufflepuffs, first years by their stature, slipped into the room.

“Don’t ever speak of this again,” Snape growled. “Get out of my classroom.”

Harry dithered for a moment, glancing at the pocket that contained Sirius’s photo, but the glint in Snape’s eye was quite murderous so he reluctantly took his leave.

That night at dinner, Harry pushed a smattering of peas around his plate with his fork. Hermione watched him silently for several long moments, chewing dainty bites of roast pork, and then put her own fork down and asked, “Are you alright, Harry?”

Ron paused in shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth and looked between his two friends. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Harry said roughly. “I’m fine.” He abandoned the vegetables and took to forming his own potatoes into a flattened mound. Ron continued eating but Hermione kept a silent reproachful eye on him until finally he set down his utensil and said, “I went to Grimmauld Place this summer.”

“Harry!” Hermione gasped, ready to scold, and he stopped her with a shake of his head.

“Professor Dumbledore took me.” She frowned thoughtfully but said nothing else. “I wanted to see if Sirius had any, I don’t know, personal items I could keep.”

“Oh,” she said sympathetically. Ron wiped his mouth with a napkin as the dishes of food disappeared and were quickly replaced with dessert. 

“What’d you find?” Ron asked. 

Harry looked up at the staff table quite without meaning to. Snape sat stiffly in his chair, not reaching for dessert, not engaged in any conversation with the professors at his side. He seemed to feel Harry’s eyes on him for after only a few moments he looked up. The blank coolness gave way to cold hatred. He climbed to his feet and whirled out of the Great Hall before Harry could blink twice.

“A box of stuff,” Harry said, turning back to his friends. “Letters, photos. There was one picture of Sirius and, er, Snape.”

“Dueling?” Ron guessed, brow furrowing. Hermione looked on curiously.

“No,” Harry said with a snort. “Snogging.” Hermione’s eyebrows shot up and her lips pressed together while Ron’s ears flushed scarlet.

“Has to be a trick or something,” Ron said in a strangled voice.

“I thought that at first,” Harry said. “Then I showed it to Snape.”

“Why would you do that?” Ron asked.

“That was insensitive of you,” Hermione added.

“Right, cause Snape is so sensitive,” Ron snorted.

“I want to know about Sirius,” Harry said with a shrug and a glance back at Snape’s now empty chair. “What he was like, his hobbies and everything that I should have asked while he was alive. I thought I’d mostly find stuff about the Marauders but once I saw that, well, I couldn’t let it go.” Harry began to pick at his thumbnail as he continued. “Snape went berserk.”

“No surprise there,” Ron muttered.

“He kept the photo,” Harry added.

“Oh,” Hermione said softly. She wore one of her mystifying sympathetic expressions. “So that means it wasn’t fake.” Harry nodded and Hermione reached up to brush away a few tears that welled in her eyes. Harry and Ron exchanged a puzzled look over her sudden weepiness. “Harry, you have to find out what happened.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Harry said peevishly. “Snape threw me out of his class though.”

“Of course he did,” Ron said. “They hated each other.”

“Or so we thought,” Hermione said. “But maybe it was more complicated than that.”

Harry thought of the memory he’d seen in the Pensieve. The photo he’d found was after the day at the lake. As hard as he’d found it to understand how his mother had ever fallen for James Potter, it was entirely impossible to dream of a scenario where Sirius could have changed his mind about Snape.

How could that have gone? _Remember the time your best mate hexed me and showed the school my pants? Want to snog now?_

Harry stayed after the next Defense class too. Snape sat at his desk marking papers as Harry approached and said, without lifting his head, “Ten points from Gryffindor.”

“For what?” Harry asked, his plan momentarily forgotten as indignation surged through him.

“Disrespect,” Snape said. “And ten more points for questioning me.”

Harry was all too familiar with Snape being an unreasonable git so he ground his teeth against the injustice and reached into his robes. Snape looked up then, his own hand darting to his pocket, and Harry couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’m not hexing you,” he said and pulled the jacket he’d taken and shrunken from Sirius’s room. He spelled it back to normal size and held it up for Snape’s inspection. “Do you recognize this?”

Snape’s eyes flickered from Harry to the jacket and back again. The irritation in his face deepened to something more sinister. “Potter, I do not and will not ever desire to reminisce about Sirius Black with you.”

“So you don’t want the jacket?” Harry asked and tossed it onto Snape’s desk where it landed in a denim heap. Snape looked once again from Harry to the jacket but this time his gaze stayed fixed on the clothing.

“How do you know about it?” Snape eventually asked.

“I don’t,” Harry answered easily. “I hoped you did.”

Snape picked up the jacket. His fingers curled into the shoulders of the garment as he held it up, examining first the front and then the back. He laid it down flat and ran his fingers over several of the patches stitched into the back. Then he folded it neatly and obscured it behind a stack of Defense textbooks.

“Your godfather went through a punk phase,” Snape said shortly. “The summer after he graduated. He’d always had a fondness for motorcycles and terrible music but he took it to a new extreme. Changed his whole wardrobe, bewitched that horrid flying bike, spent entire weekends at abrasive concerts.”

“Did you go with him?” Harry asked, leaning forward slightly, eager to hear any scrap of information about Sirius.

“No,” Snape said and the brief window of openness slammed shut. His mouth twisted and he glanced, subconsciously it seemed, at his left forearm - the Dark Mark, Harry knew. “I was otherwise occupied.”

“So you weren’t…” Harry trailed off as he struggled for the rest of the sentence and settled on, “...together?”

“That’s enough, Potter. You have a class to get to.”

“Professor, please, I want to know-”

“I don’t care,” Snape interrupted. He spoke in a low, fierce hiss and his dark eyes glimmered as he leaned across the desk. “You have no idea the pain it causes me to speak of him.” Snape flicked his wand and the classroom door banged open. “Now leave. You’re wasting my planning time.”

Disappointed and frustrated, Harry turned and made his way to the door. As he passed through the threshold, he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of Snape as he picked up Sirius’s jacket and buried his face into it.

Feeling like a voyeur, regret prickling through him, Harry looked forward and hurried away.

—-

Madam Puddifoot’s on any day other than Valentine’s Day was decidedly less frilly and pink. The room was still cramped with tables and couples attached at the lips but a moderately more pleasing palette of greens and grays splashed across the interior. The bows were mercifully gone.

Harry couldn’t say why he’d asked Lupin to meet him here of all places. He couldn’t explain a lot of the things he’d been doing lately. His reliance on the Half Blood Prince, his dedication to revealing Malfoy’s misdeeds, his obsession with Sirius’s past - his mind was spiraling and fixating on any topic other than the one he’d discovered at the end of the last year.

 _Neither can live while the other survives_.

It made a cold amount of sense and felt, in fact, inevitable since the moment he’d faced down Quirrel as an eleven year old.

He still welcomed any distraction, such as the one that settled into the seat opposite him and smiled.

“Harry,” Lupin said warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

They made a few rounds of small talk - Harry’s classes, being Quidditch captain, non-classified bits about the Order. Then in a small lull while Lupin sipped tea, Harry asked, “Did you know about Sirius and Snape?”

Lupin lowered his tea cup and frowned over the rim. “Know about - what do you mean?”

“That they…” Harry spread his hands out and shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Ah.” Lupin set the cup down on its saucer and fixed Harry with a very solemn look. “I hope you aren’t talking about this with anyone else.”

“Other than Ron and Hermione, no,” Harry said.

“Good,” Lupin said and then, a little roughly, “Sirius is gone so there’s no use protecting him anymore. But Professor Snape would not appreciate any, ah, rumors spreading. This is not the kind of thing anyone wants You-Know-Who to hear about.”

“Protecting him?” Harry repeated, face scrunching in confusion. “What kind of thing?”

“I only mean their attachment to each other - they hid it very well for a very long time. Sirius never wanted you to know and I’m sure Snape still doesn’t but-” Lupin paused and lifted an eyebrow, “-clearly you do.”

Harry had known there was something, he’d seen the photo and Snape’s face as he handled the jacket, but hearing it confirmed so calmly by Lupin untwisted something inside him. He had an answer now, even if it was really just the beginning of one. 

Questions burst forth before he could think to stop them. “When did you find out? Did my dad know? Was it - the whole time? During Azkaban and everything? Why did they act like they hated each other?”

Lupin took another drink of tea. This time Harry got the impression he was stalling. Eventually he replaced the cup and said, “It’s not my story to share.”

“No,” Harry snapped, frustration welling up. “Don’t say that. I want to know!”

He wanted to know everything because he had the dreadful suspicion that his time left to learn _anything_ was rapidly running out. There was only so much longer he could evade Voldemort and surely Stupefy wouldn’t keep him alive forever.

“What I’ll say,” Lupin said, “is that they started seeing each other around the time James and Lily did. Yes, we all knew. James was unbelievably unhappy about it. It was the first real row he and Sirius ever had. They went a few weeks without speaking to each other. Felt like an eternity.”

“I know what that’s like,” Harry muttered, thinking of his own fights with Ron as well as the times he’d been a buffer between Ron and Hermione.

“They made up, eventually, although James and Snape never moved past their animosity. Then we graduated and we all made our choices in the war and, as far as I know, that was the end of it.” Lupin circled the tea cup with his fingers and added, hesitantly, “I did wonder, when they were both at Grimmauld Place...” He shook his head. “But that’s it, Harry, that’s the basic gist and that’s all I feel comfortable sharing.”

“I wish Sirius had told me,” Harry said, staring with an unfocused gaze at the table top. “I wish I’d asked him. About anything other than my dad.”

“He knew you loved him,” Lupin said quietly. “Don't ever doubt that, Harry. You made him happy and fiercely proud. He could talk about you, your grades and your Quidditch skills and your bravery and your friends, for hours.”

Harry felt his eyes burn and reached up quickly to scrub away the pending tears. “And I killed him,” Harry whispered. 

Lupin flinched back and asked incredulously, “Is that what you think?”

All at once the tears were coming too fast for Harry to wipe them away. “I have to go,” he mumbled as he dragged his sleeve across his face. “Thank you for telling me what you did.”

“Harry,” Lupin started, climbing to his feet, but Harry had already fled.

He stumbled through the streets of Hogsmeade and not for the first time wished he had a grave to visit or an urn or even a seashore where ashes were spread. Instead he had only the image of Sirius’s body falling back and a violent gash across his heart.

—-

“Were you still sleeping together?” Harry asked bluntly. He’d stayed after class yet again and this time he was determined to get an answer from Snape, even if he had to be hexed or strangled in the process.

Snape regarded Harry from across his desk. Harry expected vitriol and so was stunned to see a calmness settled on the professor’s features.

“You will never leave me alone on this, will you?” Snape asked, clearly rhetorically. Harry still shook his head. “I won’t speak with you here. Come to my office after dinner. Detention, if anyone asks.”

He picked up his quill and bent over his desk. Harry, recognizing the dismissal, stood up and left.

He picked his nails to shreds that afternoon as he ignored his classes and daydreamed a hundred different scenarios of the meeting that evening. He ate little at dinner and though Hermione eyed him thoughtfully she didn’t pry.

Snape’s office had been moved closer to the Defense classroom though it was not the same office Lupin, Mad-Eye, and Umbridge had occupied. This new room lacked the cockroach jars and pickled appendages. It was bare and dull but the lit fireplace emitted a warmth and light that the dungeons always lacked. Maybe it was knowing that Sirius had felt something about Snape, once upon a time, but Harry felt a measure of comfort as he settled into the chair opposite Snape.

“You have twenty minutes,” Snape said, gesturing at a clock ticking away on a sparsely filled bookshelf. “Ask me what questions you will. Then we shall never speak of Sirius Black again and if you try I will curse you. Painfully, thoroughly, and unmercifully.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Were you still, you know, seeing each other? When he...went to the Department of Mysteries?” He lost his nerve for vulgarity, nestled in a comfortable chair and facing a man that was not scowling at him.

“We were only seeing each other, as you say, when we were at school. But did we - did I-” Snape floundered for a reason other than rage. It was the first time in Harry’s memory. “We enjoyed each other’s company at times, I suppose you could say.”

“And the fights? Were you really mad at each other?”

Snape smiled. Harry would have fallen out of his chair if the lightest breeze blew through the room. He’d seen Snape smirk, sneer, mockingly curl his lips, but _smile_?

“Of course,” Snape answered. “Sirius was an arrogant and infuriating fool at almost all times.” He spoke so fondly that Harry felt cleaved in two - one half his life before he’d seen Severus Snape as a person and the other half his life after this night.

“I’m sorry,” Harry blurted. It was entirely unpremeditated - the words tumbled out because they were poised on the tip of his tongue ever since Cedric Diggory died. Sorry to Amos and then sorry to the Muggles that died at Voldemort’s return and his loudest, most painful sorry to his godfather. He couldn’t apologize to any of those people so he laid the words at Snape’s feet instead.

Snape lost his good mood at once, though he became morose rather than angry as Harry was so accustomed to.

“For what, Mr. Potter?” 

“For not learning Occlumency, for letting myself be fooled, for Sirius dying.” Harry couldn’t help himself from adding, “You could have told me in Umbridge’s office. _Something_ to show you understood.”

“Though I frequently lament your intelligence, I truly believed you would know that I did.” Snape looked away for the first time. “It was Sirius’s choice to go. He should have stayed home.”

“You sound like Lupin,” Harry observed and Snape smiled a thin, mean smile - one far more familiar than the earlier amusement he’d allowed Harry to glimpse.

“Great minds,” was all Snape said. He glanced over at the clock. “Five more minutes.”

“How did it all start?” Harry asked.

“We tried to break up your parents,” Snape said with a twisted smile. “He came to me, asked me for help. No idea why he cared - jealous of losing Potter’s attention, I suppose. No idea why I agreed either.

”We spent a few weeks plotting and planning. It didn’t go anywhere except…” Snape pulled open a drawer and lifted out a familiar photo with one bent corner. He held it reverently in both hands and said, “I have to thank you for this. He told me he burned it.” Snape looked away from the picture and into Harry’s eyes. “It’s the only thing I have. This and the jacket.”

The last few moments ticked away. Harry felt only pain, a deep throbbing wound that he was sure would never heal. 

“How can you live like this?” Harry blurted, knowing he was out of time and fearing Snape wouldn’t answer. But this was the crux of it all, why he’d pestered Snape so persistently. He needed help to survive all the grief lashing away at him.

“I have things I need to do,” Snape said. He tucked the photo away as he spoke. “I’m twenty years in and almost done. When I am, I don’t intend to live with any of it, one way or another.”

“I won’t either,” Harry said quietly and Snape looked back impassively before ever so slightly inclining his head.

“I wouldn’t think so, no.” Snape stood. “That’s what I focus on. There’s an end coming and then all my errors won’t matter. And nothing will hurt anymore.”

For the first time since hearing the prophecy, Harry felt a sense of peace, warmed by the fire and by the calm certainty of Snape’s words. That was Snape’s secret, then, and Harry planned to make it his own too. He didn’t have to keep going when all he wanted to do was lie down - not forever, anyway. Make it until Voldemort’s death or until his own - and his own would shortly follow Voldemort’s if things ended up that way. The plan was comforting in its simplicity.

“Thank you,” Harry said and climbed to his feet, nearly sagging under the relief of having answers and most importantly _the_ answer. 

“I wouldn’t recommend sharing this with your friends or your headmaster.”

“I’m not going to.” 

Harry’s walk back to Gryffindor tower passed in a blur. He joined Hermione and Ron in the common room and worked dutifully on his homework as Ron complained and Hermione chided. He felt removed from it all, Snape’s words bouncing in his head: _I don’t intend to live with any of it._

No more flashbacks of screams and green light. No more fear or pain or misery. In a way, Harry almost couldn’t wait.

—-

Harry opened his eyes to blinding whiteness. He blinked a few times and shapes came into focus - a bench, a brick wall, an edge that dropped down into tracks. He realized, looking around, that he stood in King’s Crossing.

“Harry,” came a familiar, warm voice and he turned to face a beaming Albus Dumbledore.

They spoke of Voldemort and horcruxes and secrets and the war. Harry only half-listened. He’d been so relieved taking those steps through the Forbidden Forest and towards his own destruction. Having to speak when he should be nonexistent was disappointing and exhausting.

“Are you ready to go back?” Dumbledore asked after several minutes.

“Go back?” Harry asked with a pulse of fear. “I thought I had to die.”

“You did and in doing so killed the part of Voldemort housed inside you. But your soul is still intact and ready to slip back into your body.”

“Do I have to?” Harry whispered and Dumbledore looked, if only for the briefest of moments, shocked.

“No, Harry. It is your choice now.”

“Let’s move on, then,” Harry said. “I want to see my parents.”

Dumbledore looked as though he might argue but then he glanced over his shoulder as a train rolled into the station and looked back at Harry with a helpless spread of his hands.

“As you say.”

The train doors slid open and Harry slipped past them and into a seat, a feeling of excitement thrumming through him. No more Voldemort, no more war, no more bad dreams.

As the train began to move, Harry felt his first small pang of loss. Moving on also meant no more Hermione and Ron, no more Ginny, no more everyone he loved that was still living. But in a way, that was the point of it all. He’d done enough harm. They would pick up the pieces without him.

He and Dumbledore rode in silence for what could have been seconds or hours or days. Time flattened and sped up and melted together. Eventually, the train ground to a stop. Harry turned to ask Dumbledore a question and found he was alone.

The train doors opened once again and Harry peered through them. They were no longer in a misty, pale world. 

As a child, Harry had wanted many things denied to him, and one of his most coveted experiences was the circus. He’d yearned to see the elephants performing tricks and the tigers roaring at trainers. He wanted to eat fried food and popcorn and stay up so late he fell asleep in the car on the drive home. Those were all the things Dudley and his friends talked about and they all sounded wonderful when he was seven years old.

So he knew quickly where he’d arrived. Colorful circus tents dotted the land as far as he could see, all different combinations of patterns and colors. A gaggle of small children ran by, laughing, and a woman that looked eerily similar to Professor Trelawney beckoned him from behind sheer black curtains.

“Harry!” He turned at his name and was nearly knocked over as someone threw their arms around him roughly. That someone drew back and Harry took in his features. “We’ve been waiting for you,” James said and Lily stood at his side, grinning and wiping away silent tears.

“So have I,” Harry said and hugged them both. “We have so much to catch up on.”

“I’ve filled them in on a lot,” Sirius said, sidling up to James. Harry hugged him too, a far more familiar sensation that made him want to relax into his godfather’s arms and never let go.

He was at peace. He was free. He’d made the right choice.

More people joined the conversation - too many from the final battle, Harry noted, but it was impossible to feel upset standing amongst the laughter and happy chatter.

They spent hours talking and eating. James did a remarkable impression of Dumbledore and Lily taught him how to roast marshmallows over a fire. Lupin and Tonks talked everyone’s ears off about Teddy.

Eventually, to his surprise, Harry felt tired. He’d expected he wouldn’t need to sleep anymore. He yawned and all at once the hubbub died down - the music stopped, the animals fell silent, and squishy sleeping bags appeared by the dozens.

Harry nestled into the closest bag and fell asleep quickly, unplagued by troublesome thoughts. He slept deeply and dreamed only of pleasant things.

When he woke, the gray light of early morning pervaded the land. He slipped out of his bed and began to wander, taking in all the sleeping faces. There were plenty of people he didn’t recognize - people he’d met but didn’t know, he wondered, or were they not real at all but filler? Was any of it real? Was this all a single moment of time that would end when death settled in and his brain finally stopped firing?

Harry came upon Sirius and with him stood Severus Snape. They spoke in low tones that fell to silence when they heard Harry’s feet swishing in the grass.

“You were right,” Harry said to Snape who lifted a brow.

“About what, specifically?” Snape asked.

“Nothing hurts anymore.” It took several moments but then there was a flash of recognition on his face, followed by something that looked like regret.

“I shouldn’t have-”

“You were right,” Harry repeated firmly and then looked at Sirius. “I’m happy for you two.”

Sirius grinned. “Don’t get too excited, Harry. I’m just as likely to hex him as kiss him.”

“You wish you could hex me, Black. You’ve always been a mediocre dueler.”

“I could take him,” James piped up and Lily smacked him sharply on the upper arm. “I wouldn’t, of course, only saying…”

The conversation swirled around Harry and as he listened he looked up. There were no stars in this sky, just an expanse of color - currently a pale haze with the thinnest fingers of blue. 

He couldn’t know if this world really existed or how long he’d be there. But he watched his parents, his godfather, his friends, and he felt even if it all ended in the next breath, it ended right where he belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> I usually write much longer things but I had a baby last month and I have a one year old so cranking out what I can amidst the chaos 🤪 
> 
> Truly hope this was enjoyable on some level, thank you for reading ❤️ If it was please check out my other stories!


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